VPM News

Avula's mayoral transition team to establish first 3 priorities

VPM | By Keyris Manzanares

Published November 27, 2024 at 12:55 AM EST

Richmond's first Indian American mayor has 44 people working on critical issues.

Over the past three weeks Dr. Danny Avula, who made history as the first Indian immigrant to be elected mayor of Richmond, has been preparing to take office in January.

Avula said the process of campaigning was challenging and the daily act of raising funds and setting himself apart from other candidates often felt unnatural. But now, starting to govern and lead has been "glorious."

Since being elected, Avula said he’s been pulling teams together to problem solve. The day after Election Day, he met with outgoing Mayor Levar Stoney to get the lay of the land.

“There's so many people who are doing this for the right reasons, who are really passionate about making a difference in their work,” Avula said. “Obviously, there are areas of City Hall that we need to do some work on. We need to improve processes. We need to invest in systems. We need to bring the right culture of leadership, and ultimately, the right culture of the entire organization.”

Ahead of taking office on Jan. 1, Avula has put together a transition team that includes over 35 local leaders with expertise in various sectors like housing, gun violence, education and technology.

Avula said his hope is the transition team can identify the first three steps that his administration needs to be ready to tackle. He said another aspect is establishing a working relationship with Richmond City Council.

“I think starting off on the right tone and saying, ‘City Council, we're going to do this in partnership, right? We really value your expertise and the perspective that you bring representing your constituents, and we want to co-create our priorities and solutions with you,’ and that just sets the tone for how we're going to carry the work forward in this administration,” the mayor-elect said.

According to the mayor-elect, the transition team is focused on critical issues that emerged during the mayoral campaign such as affordable housing and education investments, along with city-specific problems like the process of getting a business license, gun violence prevention and a grocery store for Richmond’s Southside.

Transition team member Elizabeth Hancock Greenfield, vice president of government affairs for the Home Building Association of Richmond, said the entire team met last week and developed several working groups with different policy recommendation initiatives for the incoming Avula administration.

“Affordable housing is the buzzword and something that everyone's trying to grapple with, so that we have an adequate supply of housing for all individuals at all price points. And that's challenging in a market like today,” she added.

According to the Virginia Public Access Project, during his mayoral campaign Avula received $69,500 from the Home Building Association of Richmond, making the organization his top donor.

Hancock Greenfield said Avula is looking at ways to make housing available by increasing by-right development opportunities for multifamily housing. That would mean a developer can build multi-unit residential without the need for special permits or council’s approval, because the project is already in line with existing zoning regulations — therefore supplying the market faster.

Wijesooriya points towards the crowd as she speaks from behind a podium — Lawson Wijesooriya, Avula's campaign manager, addresses the crowd at the Broadberry on Nov. 5, 2024.

Avula detailed this in his affordable housing plan, which said the currently-in-progress rewrite of the city’s zoning code could be an opportunity to make it easier to build multi-family housing units, accessory dwelling units and other low-cost housing.

“Mixed-use zoning that serves residents across the economic spectrum must become the norm in the City of Richmond,” the plan stated.

“He is prioritizing trying to get more affordable units on the ground, and he's looking at ways to make that happen, whether it's through land use, whether it's through initiatives that offer incentives to help make the project pencil out, so that they can be more affordable,” Hancock Greenfield said.

Another member of the transition team is Tanya González, Sacred Heart Center’s executive director. González, who has served Spanish-speaking families in Richmond for over 25 years, said she was asked to co-chair the newly founded Committee on Immigrant Protection and Empowerment as part of Avula’s transition team.

That work includes making recommendations on “how to uplift immigrant communities, to ensure families are supported and receiving city services in an accessible way, and to protect families at the local level from possible anti-immigrant efforts that may come in 2025.”

Nationally, President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to launch the largest deportation program in American history once he re-enters office in late January.

“Currently there is a lot of uncertainty and growing fear within the community I work with about anti-immigrant policies, rhetoric, and discrimination that may increase in 2025,” González said in an email to VPM News. “This has a compounded negative impact on [an] individual's mental health, especially children.”

González said this is the first time in her career that she’s seen an incoming mayor fully include the emerging population of immigrant families in his transition team.

Avula said that having González on the team, as well as other Latino leaders, is important because the lived experiences of the residents they serve everyday, he said, have to make their way into policy and decision making.

“That's why they're on the transition team. It's why we're leaning on them so heavily to help us make some good decisions and and make sure that we're starting this administration with the right level of openness and listening to the needs of our residents,” Avula said.